A cloud computing platform can provide users with the ability to build, deploy, and manage services and applications in a distributed computing environment, i.e., the cloud. An ongoing challenge in improving cloud-based services is determining how to adapt traditional small scale applications to take advantage of the resources available in a distributed environment.
An example of an application type that may need adaptation in a cloud environment is relational database technology. Techniques for optimizing the performance of databases in a small scale environment have previously been the focus of substantial research. However, these prior solutions for use of database technology do not necessarily translate well to a distributed computing environment.